The facsimile installed in its original location in Strawberry Hill House.

Factum Foundation produced a facsimile of Allan Ramsay´s Portrait of Horace Walpole´s nieces, Laura Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Huntingtower in support of the Strawberry Hill Trust´s mission to recreate Horace Walpole´s art collection and restore his magnificent house, a remarkable example of English Gothic revival architecture.

The facsimile hanging at Strawberry Hill House

The facsimle of Ramsay´s portrait

Horace Walpole (1717 - 1797), 4th Earl of Orford, built his house at Strawberry Hill near London to display his extraordinary collection of treasures, which included more than 1200 ceramics and portraits of his close friends and relatives. Most of his collection was sold and dispersed worldwide in 1842 and the Portrait of Horace Walpole's Nieces: The Honorable Laura Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Huntingtower now belongs to the collection of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.

Allan Ramsay painted this work in 1765. The face of Laura Keppel (in blue) was painted on a separate canvas and Ramsay sew it onto the main canvas.

The first step in the re-creation process involved capturing in high-resolution the colour information and a panorama of the original with composite panoramic photography. The frame and the painting´s relief were recorded with photogrammetry and with the Lucida 3D Scanner.

Recording the relief of the original portrait with the Lucida 3D Scanner at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston

[L] Photogrammetry was used to record the front and back of the original frame

[L] Photogrammetry was used to record the front and back of the original frame

The relief information was 3D printed. A silicone mould was taken from that print and the information was transferred to a linen canvas. This linen support containing the relief information was subsequently merged with a colour print. The colour information was printed in layers on a flexible surface prepared by Rafa Rachewsky that could easily be adhered to the linen with the relief.

Priming the printing support.

Rafa Rachewsky prepares the support for printing.

Printing the colour information

Factum Arte's bespoke flatbed printer was designed to print in layers and over flexible surfaces. The colour skin was affixed to the relief and sealed with a vacuum pump.

The printed colour information was affixed to the relief

Each side of the frame was routed in high-density polyurethane. The sections were assembled and treated by leaders of the frame studio, Eva Segovia and David Carrillo. They carved the details prototyped in the CNC milling machines. They painted and prepared the surface for gilding. Once the coating had been applied, allowed to dry, and smoothed, it underwent a water gilding process.

Assembling the frame

Carving the details

The 3D printed frames were hand-painted and gold-gilt

The finished frame.

Allan Ramsay´s Portrait of Horace Walpole´s nieces, Laura Keppel and Charlotte, Lady Huntingtower, was installed in its original location at Strawberry Hill House in early 2017.

The facsimile of Ramsay's painting hangs in the same place Walpole had it.